Willard Huntington Wright

Willard Huntington Wright’s book The Creative Will, published in New York in 1916, made a sensational, revelatory impression on American artistic circles in a period of excitement over ideas heralding a great new pivot in art. The book was read, reread, discussed and learned by heart, and often circulated among art students, groups, courses, departments, professionals and amateurs, as well as collectors and lay admirers of new trends. Describing her feelings upon rereading The Creative Will, Anita Pollitzer, a colleague and confidante of Georgia O’Keeffe, also an ardent admirer of The Creative Will, enthusiastically calls Wright’s work “the naked truth.” The author, who described himself as an “aesthetic expert and psychological shark” and predicted the advent of an era in which abstractionism would replace realism, indeed managed to exert a huge influence on the further development not only of American visual art, but even literature.